The Catster Debates: Or, I inadvertently bring MRAs to an innocent cat website

So I did an interview about my Confused Cats Against Feminism blog with Catster.com, a site that devotes itself to collecting “helpful and hilarious information for the worldly but still infatuated Cat aficionado.” Alas, as a result of publishing this interview with me yesterday, they now seem to be collecting angry MRA commenters as well.

Here are some highlights of the, er, debate so far, which I’ve waded into myself, perhaps unwisely. (These are selections, with a bunch missing, though the comments that look obviously like they are responses to other comments, are.) Maeve Connor is the author of the post about me.

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Here, by the way, are some of the not-belittling, all-inclusive, non-mocking contributors to Women Against Feminism.

From Women Against Feminism

From Women Against Feminism

From Women Against Feminism

I’m just taking a wild guess here, but I’m pretty sure none of these gals are “tweens.”

Comments

@brooked: gah, I just looked at Martin’s feed. The ignorance of the man is just stunning. ROFL at the sidebar bit about how he sued the Gender Studies department, love the way that’s still there even though the case was thrown out as being without merit.

I’ve been chuckling to myself at work over those poor cats being indoctrinated into feminism. I can’t even teach my cats to use the toilet instead of the litterbox, and David’s teaching them philosophy, social justice, and politics?! That is next-level stuff, I tell you what.

Also, in reference to emilygoddess’s comment about MRAs parroting words without understanding what they mean, I immediately thought of this:

Let us all express our awe and wonder at David’s next-level cat training skills. I have trained my cat to understand that an annoyed tone of voice means “stop doing that”, but teaching her what feminism is? Hats off to you, sir.

The latest tweet was a retweet of a claim that the Indian budget for the current financial year has allocated money to women and children but not men. I found a summary of the budget here, but I have no idea what Plan and Unplan expenditure is for a prospective budget: http://indiabudget.nic.in/ub2014-15/bag/bag3.pdf

Clearly, all those monies going to government organisations, which will include employee salaries and wages, plus the pensions money (let alone dollars allocated to healthcare, etc) will not include a single rupee spent on men as there are no male police officers, defence force staff, doctors, and no males who use healthcare services or collect pensions.

How the hell did Tom Martin ever get accepted into a postgraduate program at the LSE? How did he pass his undergraduate degree?

Hey, Katz, I found your kitties and will put them up tomorrow (well, technically, later today, at least in my time zone). Do you want me to include your email in the post, or should I have them contact you through me?

Someone submitted this anonymously to CCAF; I thought it would make more sense to discuss it here, because CCAF is pretty much devoted to just pics, and because discussions on tumblr can become really confusing and unwieldy due to the format.

I have to say, while I definitely don’t think you’re any kind of misogynist or ageist hating on tweens or anything, and as a longtime fan of We Hunted the Mammoth, I’m not 100% comfortable with you, a man, telling women what their reaction to feminism should be (even clearly misguided women like this.) But there are women feminists who can take this on. As a white person, I don’t call out PoC for being racist because anti-racist activists of color can do that and it’s not my place as an ally.

I’m not quite sure what to say about this. For one thing, 90% of the submissions I post on CCAF are coming from women; I’ve posted two pics of my own cats, and otherwise limit myself to brief jokey comments.

For another, it seems weird to consider female antifeminists off limits for me to critique; I criticize women like Karen Straughan, Janet Bloomfield, etc etc all the time here.

I mean, obviously don’t want to lecture women about their lived experience, but JB calling women whores, and the women whose pics I included in the OP here who are calling feminists ugly, weak-minded sluts? Why shouldn’t I point out that they’re being asses?

It’s a silly rabbithole. Do we criticise male-run organisations that sell website space to feminists because the website space is not being purchased from feminists? Do we criticise male publishers for publishing feminist books?

While you’re obviously doing some vetting of submissions (and two from me haven’t made it /sob), it sounds like most of that is to prevent offensive content coming through.

You’re also not preventing any female from going out and doing something similar.

Also, the point is mockery.

So I don’t think the criticism is fair. But then I’m not Dawkins or a Dawkins acolyte so obviously I can’t logic.

If it was a site full of only male comments on why women need feminism then I’d see their point, but most of the submissions are coming from women, so David is basically just curating and posting them.

It’s not like David is trying to be THE VOICE OF FEMINISM, Schwyzer-style. He is not undermining female voices, and in fact he works with and promotes the work of female feminists (for example, in this very blog post!)

He doesn’t tell people the correct way to be a feminist. He just says “look at this awful shit I found” and mocks it.

There are two components of expenditure – plan and non-plan. Of these, plan expenditures are estimated after discussions between each of the ministries concerned and the Planning Commission. Non-plan revenue expenditure is accounted for by interest payments, subsidies (mainly on food and fertilisers), wage and salary payments to government employees, grants to States and Union Territories governments, pensions, police, economic services in various sectors, other general services such as tax collection, social services, and grants to foreign governments. Non-plan capital expenditure mainly includes defence, loans to public enterprises, loans to States, Union Territories and foreign governments.

Soooo, my feminist beeothches (slurred on account of celebratory drinking). How are things? Tough few weeks, aye? Failed to tie Rogers to the MRM. Failed to prevent the MRM conference. And what the hell is that whole #WomenAgainstFeminism thing! WOW! Did you do all that?! FanFuckingTastic! Thank you! Thank you very much!

I am That Person who, upon spying a cat pretty much anywhere, immediately goes “kitty!” and veers off in search of the cat. I am not happy until I have petted the cat. I am inconsolable when kitty runs away and does not want to be petted.

Imagine if debtor’s prisons were still a thing, as they used to be. I’m seeing a Hogarthian scene, with poor Tom Martin sitting, shackled, on a Hard Stool, and typing furiously on his notebook (second-hand, of course) about the cruelty of it all.

There is nothing wrong with pointing out misogyny from women, and mocking the damaging rhetoric spread by nasty ideologies.

If a woman says she doesn’t need feminism, that’s her opinion and I can respect that. However, when she actively opposes feminism based on willful misinterpretation of what it is to be a feminist, and expect not to be challenged and called out for it, then sorry but not sorry.

The MRM can’t use supportive women as shields from criticism by men and women alike who object to their horrible arguments.

If a woman told me she didn’t need feminism, I’d want to ask if she expected to, say, vote, or take out loans without male permission, or even open bank accounts, or have any access to birth control, or keep her job after she married, or have any chance of the same pay as her male colleagues, or access to divorce without having to prove adultery and cruelty from her husband. Because if she doesn’t need feminism, she’d better walk the walk and give up all those gains.

I actually have this unhealthy sort of Nice Guy relationship with one of the neighbourhood cats who won’t let me pat her. I’m all like “Come here puss! Kitty kitty” *makes kissy noises*
And then when she just sits on the front mat of her house staring at me and not coming towards my loving arms I’m just all “FINE THEN YOU WITHOLDING ICE QUEEN I MAKE KISSY NOISES AND MEOWS AT YOU AND YOU GIVE ME NOTHING IN RETURN DON’T YOU KNOW I AM A NICE GUY I AM ALSO A REALLY GOOD CAT-PETTER WHICH YOU’D KNOW IF YOU ONLY GAVE ME A CHANCE INSTEAD OF BEING A JERK”

As far as the “Should a man run CCAF” bit–it seems to me that this would apply if CCAF was saying “All women who reject feminism are illogical/ignorant/uninformed”. But CCAF doesn’t claim that any woman who is not a feminist is an idiot. It’s not engaging with a serious debate. It’s not even mocking any specific woman/women who have held up a sign; it’s countering some rhetorical non-sequiturs and overt mischaractarization with cute, fuzzy overlords posed next to rhetorical non-sequiturs and overt mischaractarization–about the same subject, no less!

I get why it’s inappropriate for someone from a privileged group to lecture people from an oppressed group about how to properly deal with their oppression. But I feel like, for a lot of reasons, CCAF doesn’t fit that description.

@pecunium: and I hope he asked Richard Dawkins to create his scale of funniness for rating their jokes.

@saphy and @kitteh: one of my cats walks over me, literally, every night. He goes around the bed, jumps up next to me for a snuggle then walks on me to go to the other side. Sometimes he omits the snuggle part. He is also the one that has the “no, mummy” meow down pat too. And he has ruined two suitcases of mine – from getting home, after I take all my stuff out, he jumped in them and peed in them. He’s *never* toileted incorrectly. I read that as a “piss on you mummy for being away for 5 days” message.

He, along with the other boys, if annoyed with me will sit on the floor with his back to me, perfectly perpendicular. Cats – not subtle.

We Hunted the Mammoth tracks and mocks the white male rage underlying the rise of Trump and Trumpism. This blog is NOT a safe space; given the subject matter -- misogyny and hate -- there's really no way it could be.